Organizational justice, job satisfaction and academic rank: a moderating mediation study on employee commitment in Ethiopian public universities

PurposeOrganizational justice and its impact on employee commitment have received a lot of attention these days. The objective of this study is to see the effect of job satisfaction as a mediator in the relationship between organizational justice and employee commitment. Also, the role of academic rank as a moderator in the model is probed.Design/methodology/approachA moderating mediation structural equation model was used for randomly collected cross-section data on 285 employees from public universities in Ethiopia. Necessary condition analysis (NCA) was employed to check the importance of the variables. The Gaussian copula approach was used to check endogeneity in the structural model.FindingsNCA confirms the importance of organizational justice and employee satisfaction as the independent variables. The Gaussian copula approach reveals no endogeneity problems in the structural model. The results supported the partial mediating role of job satisfaction in organizational justice and academic staff’s commitment. Moreover, though staff rank is not a necessary condition, it plays the role of moderator in the relationship between academic staff’s job satisfaction and commitment.Practical implicationsThis paper affirms that public institutions must implement fair initiatives and procedures to promote academic staff satisfaction and commitment.Originality/valueThis is the first study to check the job rank as a moderator in the model comprising organization justice, employee commitment and satisfaction. Moreover, application of NCA and Gaussian copula adds to methodological innovation.